This is the same Danielle Paquette who accepts, without challenge, the debunked statistic that one-in-five college women are raped--even though every single survey that repeats this lie is based on self-reporting. (And, even though every one of those surveys was designed by people with a financial interest in the college rape "epidemic" and the questions are weighted to "prove" the existence of such an epidemic.) In one article Danielle Paquette wrote: "Nearly one in five women in the United States have been sexually assaulted . . . ." In another, she wrote: "One in five college women will be sexually assaulted before graduation."

Here's the dirty little secret Danielle Paquette never mentions: every time--every single time--sexual assault claims are actually tested by examining the evidence (in other words, every time we bother to hear what the accused has to say), the majority of such claims can't be said to be sexual assault. That's a fact.

Put aside the lying, a significant percentage of college women--approaching half--admit they confuse consensual acts with rape. A Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that 44% of college women--that's approaching half--think that when a woman gives a guy a "nod in agreement," that isn't enough for consent.

And here's the really bad part: the sexual grievance industry has used the lies in sexual assault surveys to take away the due process rights of college men. That, of course, is totally lost on Danielle Paquette.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

In the story posted below, a young man was decapitated because a woman accused him of rape. This didn't happen in a backward, third world country, it happened in Minnesota. I am sickened by it, but I am not surprised.

But this article is a microcosm of a culture war that has been raging for some time: "enlightened" extremists and their media and academic enablers assume that middle America, ruled by dreaded white males, hates and outright oppresses people who aren't like them in order to maintain their privilege.

Friday, June 17, 2016

SecDef Ash Carter recently put into writing a very true and troubling aspect of Military Justice in an attempt to justify how much more awesome military prosecutors are than civilian prosecutors:

"Additionally, in both civilian and military judicial systems, defendants are often tried for"collateral misconduct” charges, such as lying to an investigator, in addition to an underlyingcrime. In both the military and civilian systems, it is sometimes difficult to obtain a convictionfor sexual assault.It is a common practice for prosecutors to attempt to obtain convictions for collateral charges as well, which provide additional methods of holding an individual responsible for his or her acts in the event of an acquittal for the charge of sexual assault.

The military justice system has additional collateral misconduct charges that would not be available in a civilian criminal justice setting, such as conduct unbecoming an officer, adultery, and orders violations. The military also has a range of disciplinary and other tools available that have no civilian counterpart, such as non-judicial punishment and administrative discharges. Accordingly, in sexual assault cases, it is common that charges other than, or in addition to, a charge specifically for sexual assault may be pursued as a means of increasing the likelihood that the accused is ultimately held accountable."Essentially, what Secretary Carter is saying is that the military is unique because Servicemembers can be tried for many crimes that civilians cannot be tried, for example adultery or 'conduct unbecoming an Officer.' So, when a Commander has that really weak sexual assault case that civilian prosecutors would not touch with a ten foot pole because it never should see the inside of a courtroom, military prosecutors can still hold an individual responsible for sexual assault with an adultery conviction, even if he is acquitted for sexual assault.

But, sometimes in the military, a sexual assault charge is actually the collateral misconduct for weak non-sexual assault charges to effectuate the Commander's intent to get the Accused kicked out of the military with a dishonorable discharge. In other words, when a military prosecutor has a weak case for non-sexual misconduct that does not warrant a court-martial, sometimes they will search for a sexual assault "victim" to justify a case going to Court-martial.

A perfect example of this premise being true to life is the recent case of Major Kit Martin at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. MAJ Martin thought that he was married to a woman named Joan Harmon. It turns out that MAJ Martin was not technically married to her because unbeknownst to him on the date of his marriage to her, she had not divorced her husband. MAJ Martin later found out Joan was a bigamist when he filed for divorce due to her adultery, notwithstanding her threats to ruin his career if he divorced her. She ultimately was charged with bigamy and pleaded guilty with a deferred conviction in Kentucky.

The first volley Mrs. Harmon fired to make good on her threat was to falsely accuse MAJ Martin of espionage. She and her alleged lover, Calvin Phillip, presented a laptop with classified information on it to the FBI and alleged that MAJ Martin was a spy. MAJ Martin passed a polygraph regarding this issue by Army Counterintelligence, but his Commander MG Mark Stammer attempted to impose nonjudicial punishment against MAJ Martin. When MAJ Martin demanded trial by court-martial because he did not trust MG Stammer a.k.a. "The Hammer" to be unbiased, that is when Army prosecutors started looking for collateral misconduct.So, it has been reported that the Army approached Ms. Harmon who was locked and loaded for her second volley and asked her if MAJ Martin ever sexually assaulted her or her kids. Mind you, neither this woman nor her children had ever reported any kind of abuse whatsoever. Yet, MAJ Martin was charged with sexual assault against his wife, sexual assault against her children who he had supported as his own, even though they were not his, and physical abuse. A witness testified that she heard the military prosecutors at a preliminary hearing state that Ms. Harmon was not credible, but they could use the charges as leverage and could dismiss them before the trial once it got referred to a Court-martial. In other words, it appears based on the witness's testimony that the prosecutors knew that her allegations that she was sexual assaulted by MAJ Martin were bogus, but they were going to use the bogus charges to shore up a weak espionage case, for which Harmon was also connected. And, true to their word, those prosecutors dismissed the sexual assault charges involving Joan Harmon on the first day of the court-martial.

Ultimately, MAJ Martin was acquitted of sexual assault against the kids, but he was convicted of simple battery and mishandling classified information and was sentenced to 90 days of confinement and a dismissal. I guess this is to what Secretary Carter refers when he says that through charging collateral misconduct in the military, Servicemembers can still be held accountable for collateral misconduct in the event they are acquitted of sexual assault.

So, at least the Secretary of Defense admits that military prosecutors take no issue at finding collateral alleged misconduct to shore up a weak sexual assault case. But, I wonder if Secretary Carter understands that military prosecutors are shoring up weak non-sexual assault cases with bogus sexual assault charges. Because the strategy is becoming just as common in the military to falsely accuse heroes like MAJ Martin of rape to get them out of the military, as the strategy of the medical profession in the 1600's when they falsely accused midwives of being witches to get them out of the baby birthing business.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Chris Powell, the editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut, explained the campus witch rape witch hunt as well as any explanation we've seen:

[The] destruction of due process of law in sexual-assault cases and the ruin of people who are merely accused is exactly what the banshees of political correctness want, since due process hampers getting convictions in such cases -- as if due process doesn't hamper getting convictions in all cases and as if due process, from the Magna Carta in 1215 to the Sixth Amendment in 1791 to Connecticut's 1818 and 1965 constitutions, has not for centuries been regarded as the essential mechanism for increasing the likelihood that justice will be done and be seen to have been done.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

The sociopath aberration that is Brock Turner--the teenager who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman when he was a Stanford student athlete--is now the poster boy for the sexual grievance cartel.

The poor, hapless cartel has had to resign itself in recent years to taking untold tax and tuition dollars while touting made-up sexual assaults to "prove" a rape culture that doesn't really exist. We've chronicled numerous such efforts on this site. Now, finally, they have a young man that fits the preferred narrative (a white athlete from a prestigious school)--and he's actually guilty--so they're making the most of it.

They are using this case to, once again, put masculinity itself on trial and to reduce young men as a class to vile caricature. They are saying that Mr. Turmer "exemplifies every aspect of white male privilege in America." See here.

In fact, everything about the Brock Turner rape is an aberration--except for the rescue of the victim. The four young men who played roles in rescuing Brock Turner's rape victim are typical of young men living in America in 2016, Brock Turner is not.

But, hey, why let the facts get in the way of college rape hysteria?

Mr. Turner got a sentence that seemed far too lenient, and a lot of gender extremists are calling for the judge (who happens to be a well-respected jurist) to be recalled.

Funny, I don't recall ever hearing any of those same angry protesters complain about the undeniable sentencing disparity between male and female perpetrators of sexual assault. When women sexually assault boys, they often get the same sort of slap on the wrist Brock Turner got here. Yet those stories never draw protests or recall petitions, and they don't stay on the front page of Google news for days and days as the Turner case has.

The shrillest voices protesting Brock Turner's sentence are the same ones who continually insist that it's perfectly appropriate for college women to choose not to go to the police when they are raped, but instead report to their schools. We have this anomaly: if Brock Turner's victim had decided to simply report her rape to the college and not the police, and if Mr. Turner had been merely expelled and not incarcerated--thus allowing him to rape more women off-campus--the shrill voices complaining about the sentence would be perfectly happy. Go figure.

The sexual grievance cartel has its poster boy, and it's my guess we're going to be hearing nothing except "Brock Turner" from now on.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

In the YouTube clip below, Hillary Clinton clearly, plainly, unambiguously said that in a case of alleged rape, the default position should be to believe one side (who happens to be the accuser) "until they are disbelieved based on evidence." The competing "evidence" will almost always need to be proffered by the accused, or by someone supporting the accused's position. And she didn't say just any evidence will do--the evidence has to be sufficient so that we actually disbelieve her story. Hillary Clinton buys into the notion that a man accused is guilty until he proves his innocence. That represents a monumental sea change in the way we think about criminal offenses. As you watch the clip below, you need to understand why it is so awful.

Shifting the burden of proving consent in rape cases is an idea long pushed by extremist victims' advocates. We've been warning about it at COTWA for years. Colleges have started mandating it on their own in the past couple of years, and some states are now legally requiring colleges to shift the burden of proof. It is an articulation of the worst kind of radical feminist thought. We think it will be ruled unconstitutional when it is finally challenged.

Linda Brookover Bourque's "Defining Rape" said in 1989 that the ultimate objective of rape reform--the ultimate objective--is shifting the burden of proof from "the victim" to "the offender."

Mainstream feminist extremist Jessica Valenti advocates that America look to Swedish law as its legislative model for rape, and "activists and legal experts in Sweden want to change the law there so that the burden of proof is on the accused; the alleged rapist would have to show that he got consent, instead of the victim having to prove that she didn't give it."

Serious feminist scholars have written extensively on the subject in an effort to change the law. Criminal law professor and feminist Michele Alexandre would make the sex act a presumed crime whenever a woman cries rape. See M. Alexandre, "‘Girls Gone Wild’ and Rape Law: Revising the Contractual Concept of Consent & Ensuring an Unbiased Application of ‘Reasonable Doubt’ When the Victim is Non-Traditional," 17 American Univ. Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law 1, 41, 55-56 (2009). In "Addressing Rape Reform in Law and Practice" (2008), Professor Susan Caringella of Western Michigan University's Sociology Department, not only refused to pay lip service to insuring that the innocent aren't punished with the guilty, she goes so far as to declare that men accused of rape are "overprotect[ed]." She writes: "It is high time to give victims a fair shake, to dismantle the zealous overprotections for men accused of this crime, which have been buoyed up by the myths about false accusations, ulterior motives, and so on, commonly embraced when rape charges are levied." Prof. Caringella advocates a shift in the burden of proof by enacting affirmative consent laws. Two years ago, the Washington Supreme Court reversed some very bad law that put the burden of proving consent in rape cases on the accused.

Hillary Clinton has tapped into an idea espoused by radical feminists, and it is a very dangerous thing. The Obama administration has manifested blatant hostility to the due process rights of men accused of rape--a hostility that goes far beyond what any previous administration has manifested (if you don't know that, you haven't been paying attention to the issue since April 2011 when the "Dear Colleague" letter was promulgated)--and Clinton's attitude clearly suggests the hostility and the witch hunts will continue. At an event in Iowa on September 14, 2015, Hillary Clinton declared, “I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault . . . You have the right . . . to be believed and we’re with you.” She also posted the following comment on Twitter: “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be . . . believed, and supported.”

Every woman who claims she was raped has the right to be treated with respect and to be taken seriously. She should not be disbelieved, but it needs to be her burden (or the state's or the school's) to prove that the man she accused is guilty.

The extremists in the sexual grievance cartel are intent on painting young men as monsters and insisting that an entire gender needs reprogramming. They've been doing this for years. I've been refuting it for years, and I've had enough of them.

One of their latest "studies" supposedly proves that more than half of male college athletes are rapists . . . because they nag for sex. Yes, that's right--these young men "insist" their partners have sex but don't force them to do so. That's "rape," don't you know.

I could repeat all the reasons why "sexual coercion" is not rape--but I've come to conclusion that the "all men are rapist" arguments aren't worthy of serious refutation.

The purveyors of the college rape epidemic are sick, and they are nuts. They should not be welcomed in polite society. We must keep our sons away from them. It's time for all people of goodwill to insist they be fired from their cushy university jobs and that they have no voice in the public square on this or any other issue.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Donald Trump has been widely condemned across the political spectrum for calling on a judge of Mexican heritage to recuse himself in a case involving Trump. A lot of people are outraged that Trump seems to assume that a judge isn't being fair to Trump because of the judge's race.

So why is there no criticism of a feminist law professor for saying something even more outrageous, even more offensive?

Because the feminist professor's comment was directed at men, and the mainstream media thinks that sort of outrage is justified.

Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber is upset over what she perceives to be the light sentence imposed on a former Stanford athlete convicted of sexual assault. Dauber made the following comment: "We need judges who understand violence against women. Judge Persky does not. He should be replaced. Hopefully a qualified woman will replace him."

While Donald Trump suggested that a judge isn't being fair because of his race, Professor Dauber suggested not only that a judge isn't being fair because of his gender, but that a male judge is incapable of being fair in sexual assault cases because of his gender.

Dauber has out-trumped Trump for bigotry, stupidity, and nastiness. Her comment is related by NPR as if there was nothing wrong with it. When gender progressives say nasty things about men, they are never challenged by outlets like NPR.

The suggestion that men, as a class, can't fairly adjudicate sexual assault cases against women is outrageous, of course. It's also emblematic of a sort of stereotypical "man-hating" that has given feminists a black eye among wide swaths of the American populace. My guess is that Dauber's idiotic comment plays well in the radical feminist echo chamber--sadly, that includes NPR and like-minded progressive media outlets. Here in the real world, it's offensive.

Dauber is also on record warning about young men who seek legal redress for false rape claims against them. You see, there are "victims" and there are "victims." A man victimized by a false rape claim needs to work harder than other victims to prove he deserves redress for the wrong done to him. Nice, Michele.

At UC Santa Barbara, Young Americans for Liberty recently sponsored a talk titled, "Is there a Rape Epidemic?: Rape Hysteria, Due Process, and Free Speech." The sponsors of the event took issue with the college rape epidemic meme, and that one-in-five college women are raped.

On the Facebook event listing for this event, the sponsors explained: "This event was intended to be a panel discussion, with propositions from both sides of the argument. Yet, we have found it incredibly difficult to find anyone who is willing to present the affirmative position — that there is indeed a rape epidemic on college campuses, and that the measures taken by the universities to combat these problems are therefore fair / justified."

The Facebook listing goes on to state the following: "We have contacted every single feminist studies professor at UCSB… but none are willing to present the affirmative position." It then quotes a professor from the school's Feminist Studies Department who purportedly said, “It is important to not have debates.”

Read it again: "It is important to not have debates." That's a line ripped right from the sexual grievance cartel's playbook.

Aside from all the usual problems with college rape studies that skew the results, by far the biggest is this: the one-in-five statistic assumes that every claim of sexual assault in a college sexual assault survey was an actual sexual assault. That's just silly. A Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that 44% of college women--that's approaching half--think that when a woman gives a guy a "nod in agreement," that isn't enough for consent. A bare majority of college women (just 51%) think that it is. So when a college women tells a survey questioner she had sex without her consent, we're supposed to automatically assume she was sexually assaulted without knowing the circumstances? That's laughable, of course.

The fact is, any time sexual assault claims are subjected to scrutiny and competing evidence of innocence (that is, any time claims are objectively investigated), the majority can't be said to be either assaults or non-assaults. While there are relatively few claims that are conclusively false, there are also relatively few claims that are conclusively sexual assault.

The sexual grievance cartel is correct--there should not be any debate about whether there is a college rape epidemic: there isn't. It's irritating when they say there is.